Sub-grid Detection in DNA Microarray Images

Abstract

Analysis of DNA microarray images is a crucial step in gene expression analysis, as it influences the whole process for obtaining biological conclusions. When processing the underlying images, accurately separating the sub-grids is of supreme importance for subsequent steps. A method for separating the sub-grids is proposed, which aims to first, detect rotations in the images independently for the x and y axes, corrected by an affine transformation, and second, separate the corresponding sub-grids in the corrected image. Extensive experiments performed in various real-life microarray images from different sources show that the proposed method effectively detects and corrects the underlying rotations and accurately finds the sub-grid separations.